The Erie City Council held a caucus on September 25, 2026, to discuss several agenda items including census outreach, a conditional use approval for the Nine Ships project, repository sales, storm recovery funding, and the pension minimum municipal obligation (MMO). No public comments were heard during this session.
So those demographics will probably need a targeted focus campaigns to uh sway some of their fears. Thank you. Thank you. Do we um and I know it's this is early on, and we're just now kind of looking at it. Are do we have a um I guess like the thought process around like how are we going to start the engagement process or a program of mind or committees that's forming? Yeah, so I mean I think the intent is to go back to the door-to-door model. I mean, you know, I think you all remember um the kind of door-to-door work that was done in 20, I think it was the summer of 2018, perhaps. Um I think that's the model that we're going back to. See, to your point, Councilor Horton, we cannot show up for the census and just expect people to talk to us and give us all this information. So the intent is to train and create teams that will be deployed throughout the city. We have lots of outreach information we can give them, build those trust, build those relationships as we're providing them with services and connecting so that when we do come back for the census, they know us and they're ready to answer the question. So it's about building the team now. That's the intent. Okay. Wonderful. Uh just to kind of um echo a little bit of what my colleagues have shared too, knowing with especially within marginalized and oppressed communities that it there is a strong fear around being honest, and there's also an erasure of a lot of the identities around being counted. Uh so I think just the education with that component too. Um it also might spark some some questions around how are we going to capture data that this census isn't intentionally not capturing. For example, trans people are not captured on the on the data, but we know they exist, because I'm I mean I'm here. Um, but how do we as a city make sure that we're still capturing those? The information about those and thank you. I guess I should know that our team is going to Philadelphia for training on this. So this isn't us making this up as we go. That's why we got the grant. So we have funding to send them and have them trained with best practice here. Wonderful. Thank you. Uh I I am excited to see how how early we're starting with that too. Uh because this is this is gonna take a long on-ramp to building up. Um questions as we look at uh the old the business uh old business item. This is uh where we had the public hearing on last time, and I wanted to just make a note that we have members of the administration here uh to answer any questions. If we had any follow-up questions, anything we wanted to flush out, they will not be present during the the meeting. So if we had any questions we wanted to ask about um us voting on this and approving it, now would be the time as we have the staff here who've been working on it. I don't want to speak for everyone on council, but it was my understanding that with the conditions that were laid out that council felt comfortable moving forward with this one. Yes, please. So when I was drafting this, I used you know the models from the Scots Hotel in the market house uh projects and then incorporated what was already kind of in those so that we're consistent with our waterfront conditional use approvals and incorporated what was just you know discussed by public comment and by our witnesses. So really the goal, so there was so to use living landscape material which would include a regionally native planting materials where they could. That was the wording we've used before. One was to incorporate uh reasonable uh bird or wildlife sensitive measures to protect you know nature. Uh next was there's some testimony about you know, it was unknown what wildlife raccoons deer lived in that area. So they were to they would be they should cons they would consult a wildlife expert to either you know capture or remove whatever animals they can. Um part of their presentation was they had exterior lighting along the driveway. Um so but that was also something we incorporated in other projects. So I incorporated our same language further. There was a talk about how there's there is a fence, but it needs to replace, it needs updated. Um so there's a requirement that the fence should be in good condition, needs to be maintained, and the cost of that is on them. And then further that um they have they are they were adjusting their initial plan, they were trying to get kind of get some square footage on top of one of the bluffs. Um they agreed to pull that back. So what I put in here was that they need to be able to actively it's part of their business practices to preserve the bluff because that's a requirement of the zoning code, and also they're they're not to be you know doing work stuff or whatever on the bluffs. And then also to if they needed any signs, uh, that's what section 333 of the zoning code is for, so the zoning hearing board.